The Door Into Shadow

— and she fell out of that memory and into another one: this time, the memory of some nameless mdaha in the ancient time on the Homeworld, one who sat perched on a dark red stone in a violet twilight with another, while the starpool came up over the horizon. The Dragon turned to look into the other's

eyes, which were silver fire set in a hide of turquoise and lapis. The Dragon fell a great depth into those eyes, into a timeless, merciless, fathomless love which held the whole Universe within it as a person awake holds the memory of a dream—

Our line often soared with the Immanence, she remembered Hasai saying. One gets used to It. But no Dragon ever got used to the Other's

regard. The more one looked into that Other's eyes, the more powerful, and the more unbearable, the expe-rience became.

In a blinding moment of realization, Segnbora understood what she had seen in Hasai's eyes on the night of unearthed memories. She

understood, too, why she always averted her gaze after looking too long into the eyes of another human being—

The agonized joy of the discovery threw her out into the world again, back into whirling snow, ice and darkness. But the cold didn't matter

anymore. Not even her own exhaus-tion, nor Steelsheen's panic, bothered her now. All she needed was a moment to put it into words, and the

secret would be hers forever. . Ahead of her, hearing Steelsheen's hooves scrape and clatter on the slippery rock, Lang twisted around in the